


Staying Up All Night Hoping

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [14]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet is not totally new to the concept of waiting for Liz to come back to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staying Up All Night Hoping

            A gifted young artist whose exuberant larger-than-life paintings displayed an intriguing use of colour took his paintbrush out of his mouth and announced: “Juliet, you’re pacing.”

 

            “I am _not_ pacing,” Juliet said, with some justice.

 

            “Says you,” Jamie Burke-Lester said, making another minute brush-stroke on a very small miniature, and preparing to drive the art critics who knew him for his oversized murals round the twist. “You’re mentally pacing. Your body is sitting in a chair, pretending to be a Victorian – thanks for that, by the way – but your mind has found a nice long bit of corridor and is tramping up and down it like nobody’s business.”

 

            Juliet glared at him without moving a muscle; not difficult, since the black dress she was wearing constricted her to the point of suffocation. “My mind and body are united in thinking this dress is a horror-show. What are you up to, anyway? This is the fourth picture I’ve sat for and it’s _very boring_.”  


            “I did say there would be six when I asked you,” Jamie said patiently, adding blonde highlights to Juliet’s hair, confined in a strict bun. “It’s for a new exhibition. I want to put the wind up whichever critic it was who said my greatest strengths were landscapes without people in for me to mess up and the size of my works their principal interest, because it annoyed the _hell_ out of me.”

 

            Juliet rolled her eyes.

 

            “I’ll paint you cross-eyed,” Jamie warned.

 

            Juliet returned her eyes to their proper position. “Don’t you think that’s petty?”

           

            “Yeff,” Jamie said, tongue between his teeth, brown eyes almost crossed as he made a miniscule alteration to the cameo brooch at Juliet’s throat. “Bu’ fen again–“ he removed his tongue from between his teeth- “I already really liked the idea. It was just that after whatsisname started in on me, I decided I was definitely going to do it, and he could go hang. Out with it, Juliet: what’s really bothering you?”

 

            Juliet sighed. “Will you tell me what this is all in aid of if I tell you what’s bothering me? It’s driving us all bats, Jamie. That bandmate of Nicky’s has been threatening to hunt you down and castrate you with a tuning fork.”

 

            “That’s just Tess,” Jamie said contentedly, deepening the shading in the background. Nicky’s violently red-headed and violently opinionated lead singer was a constant trial to Nicky, but Tess and Nicky together were a far greater headache for their bandmates than they ever were separately to each other. “And I’ll think about it.”

 

            In truth, he’d hardly even explained it to his agent, who was growing twitchier by the day. The only one who actually knew what was happening was his father, who had had several versions of the concept bounced off him in late-night telephone calls, which had eventually led to his father’s long-term partner throwing his father’s phone out of the window. The exhibition he had in mind didn’t even have a name yet, although Jamie personally quite liked _Rise and Fall_ : he had it all planned out, six rooms which were installations in themselves and belonged to six different time periods. The miniatures would be of the same people, dressed for the different time periods, and hidden around the room, and – this was Jamie’s favourite bit, aside from the actual painting and finding the places for the miniatures – they would be the only touches of colour in the room. Everything else would be dead white, with one window in each room showing an event of the time in black and white, so as to orientate people and not expect them to know when they were based on furniture alone. Jamie fully expected to be told that he’d been too influenced by the anomalies; the people he’d asked to sit for the miniatures had already told him that, to a man. It hadn’t stopped him wheedling them into participating: his father, Jon Lyle, Tess, Juliet, his aunt Alison, his brother Nicky – though Liz had refused categorically.

 

            He wasn’t surprised in the slightest that Juliet sighed, and said: “Liz.”  


            “What about her?” Jamie enquired.

 

            Juliet looked annoyed as only a prima ballerina can. “She’s _not here_.”

 

            “Mm,” Jamie said, tongue between his teeth again. “She’s been gone longer before.”

 

            “I want her back,” Juliet said. “Now.”

 

            “Doesn’t work like that,” Jamie said, peering at a fold of cloth and checking he had the skin tone right. He was about to lose the natural light streaming in through the studio’s windows, so it was important he finished now or he’d still be working on this one tomorrow and Juliet would lose patience.

 

            “I know,” Juliet said with marked patience. “That’s what I feel, though.”

 

            “It’s what we all feel,” Jamie said calmly. “Dad especially is never sure she’s coming back. Nicky practically spasms when she’s gone for too long. I lock myself up and paint. Mum, to my certain knowledge, chews her fingernails. _You_ go off and do stupid things in pointe shoes. Don’t think I didn’t notice those plasters on your toes.” He leaned back to get some perspective on the painting, nodded sharply, and signed it in the corner. “Jon is the only one who stays at all calm.”

 

            “She’s been gone a month!”

 

            “That’s nothing,” Jamie said, stretching. “And she went missing once, did she tell you? Scared us all shitless, but Jon said to believe nothing until we saw a body, and we didn’t, and she is, you note, still here.”

 

            “You aren’t helping,” Juliet informed him, coming to look at the finished project. “Oh, _wow_. I always forget how good you are.”

 

            Jamie grinned like a cat who’d been at the cream. “You wait till you see it in situ.”

 

            Juliet hugged him. “I can’t wait. Now get me out of this _disgusting_ dress.”

 

***

           

            The phone-call came in the middle of the night. Juliet flailed around, seized her lighted phone off the bedside table, pressed a series of touch-screen buttons, and mumbled something that might have been ‘what the hell’, but also might quite easily have been ‘aliens are landing’.

 

            “Juliet?” said a puzzled, intrigued voice. “Juliet, is that your ear?”

 

            Juliet woke up all the way and sat up in bed quite abruptly, realising that she’d managed to not only accept the incoming call but also turn the videophone function on. “Liz? Oh, thank God!”

 

            Liz chuckled, low and warm. Juliet had by now managed to get the phone the right way up and in front of her eyes, and she could see that Liz looked healthy, but tired and battered, with dark shadows under her eyes. “Yeah, I’m alive. Are you at your flat?”

 

            “Yes,” Juliet said. “Oh, my God. I- just to see your face-“ She trailed off.

 

            A small, rueful smile curled Liz’s lips. “It’s good to know you miss me, I suppose.” She paused, and said hesitantly: “Can I come round?”

 

            “I’m not flattered that you feel you need to ask,” Juliet said tartly. “Where are you? How soon can you be here?”

 

            Liz’s smile broadened. “Paddington Station. In half an hour, maybe less.”

 

            “I’ll be waiting,” Juliet promised, and scrambled up and put her dressing gown on and headed into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

 

            Liz arrived ten minutes short of her thirty-minute estimate; Juliet heard the knock on the door and hurried to open it. When she did, there was a moment of silence and stillness as they sized each other up. Liz was tired, a bit grubby, bruised, but she had no shadows in her eyes, which were bright and alert and fixed on Juliet. Juliet wondered what she saw, wondered, with a slight pang of fear, if they’d lost the ease they’d regained in their relationship.

 

            Liz cleared her throat. “Can I come in?” she asked.

 

            “Yes,” Juliet said, and stood aside.

 

            Liz moved over the threshold, and Juliet shut the door. Then she said awkwardly: “D’you need anything?”  


            Liz smiled, sane and warm and loving, and let her Bergen fall off her shoulders, pulling Juliet gently into her arms for an unusually soft kiss. “A shower would be brilliant. And then...”

 

            “And then?” Juliet prompted, heart thumping.

 

            Liz held her closer, and buried her face in Juliet’s blonde hair. In the other woman’s sudden tenseness, Juliet caught the first tinge of things remembered that Liz would rather forget. She suspected that Liz still hadn’t quite crashed down from her adrenaline high, and that now she’d run out of things to do on automatic she had room to think, and didn’t like what she was thinking about. “Take me to bed. I need looking after. Please?”

 

            Juliet disentangled herself with some difficulty, stood on tiptoe and kissed Liz’s forehead. “I think I can manage that,” she said, and knew they were going to be all right.


End file.
